‘Silence of the Lambs’ Director Jonathan Demme Dead at 73

Jonathan Demme, the acclaimed filmmaker behind the films Silence of the Lambs and Married to the Mob, has died of esophageal cancer. He passed away at a hospital in Manhattan according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Demme was born in Baldwin, New York in 1944, and is a graduate at the University of Florida. Throughout the 80’s, he was known as a comedic film director. That all changed in 1991 when he directed Silence of the Lambs, a film that serves as the on-screen debut of the infamous serial killer Hannibal Lecter. And his career in filmmaking lasted for a total of 49 years.